Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
The Singers Change, the Music Goes On
No one really dies in the myths.
No world is lost in the stories.
Everything is lost in the retelling,
in being wondered at. We grow up
and grow old in our land of grass
and blood moons, birth and goneness.
A place of absolutes. Of returning.
We live our myth in the recurrence,
pretending we will return another day.
Like the morning coming every morning.
The truth is we come back as a choir.
Otherwise Eurydice would be forever
in the dark. Our singing brings her
back. Our dying keeps her alive.
Linda Gregg has received numerous awards for her poetry—fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Lannan Literary Foundation, the 2003 Sara Teasdale Award, and the 2006 PEN/Voelcker Award winner for Poetry, among others.
Her AGNI poem “The Singers Change, the Music Goes On” was chosen for The Best American Poetry 2001. (updated 2006)